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THE JAPANESE

Japan is a country of which the outer barbarian world as yet knows little. By slow degrees, however, the great wave of progress is making inroads even in that jealously guarded group of islands; but as yet it is but in three places, not in themselves of much importance that the country is open to foreign commerce. The capital is only accessible to diplomatic agents, and the excursions which have been made into the interior have been of an imperfect kind.

Yeddo, with the great volcanic cone of Fusiyama prominent in all the views of the city: Yokohama, Kanagawa, Kagosima, the Central Sea,—these names bring before us almost all that we really know about Japan. There are maps of the empire to be found, which show the divisions and towns of the great island of Nippon, and also of the smaller islands of the group; but we know little of them except their names and their relative position. The day is yet to come when the physical geography of this fine group of islands will be laid bare to the researches of Western men of science. The latitude of the islands, together with the influence of that warm ocean current which may be called the Pacific Gulf Stream, ensures for them a mild climate; and rice, cotton, and silk are among the varied productions of this favoured country. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that earthquakes are not unusual, that the volcanic fires are not yet extinct in Japan, and that the shores are sometimes visited by the fierce typhoons which desolate the neighbouring seas.

The people themselves, however, their religion and government, their houses, their manners and customs, have been subject to observation in the different towns open to foreigners; and several accounts have been laid before the public. Of these, none is more interesting than the narrative of his life in Japan which has been given to the world by M. Aimé Humbert,^[1] the Swiss minister in Japan, who arrived there in the year 1863, and who has prepared a narrative of his sojourn in Yokohama and Yeddo, and his excursions in the neighbourhood of these places, which is extremely lively and interesting. M. Humbert's observations are chiefly upon the people; and his remarks and the number of illustrations with which the descriptions in his two magnificent volumes are enriched, bring before us the Japanese, at least of the cities, with very great vividness. They live and move before our eyes: we see them in their temples, in their court dresses, in their everyday life, in their amusements, in the pursuit of their trades and professions in the exercise of justice, in the celebration of their annual fêtes.

The Japanese, M. Humbert thinks, are of diverse origin. Some possibly came from China, some were Mongols from the neighbouring Corea; but doubtless many derive their descent from ancestors whose frail boats were drifted from the Malaysian Archipelago far to the south. The Japanese are not a tall race: the head and chest are generally large, the legs short, the hands small and often beautiful, the hair long, smooth, and black, the nose well-defined, the eyes more prominent than those of Europeans, the dominant colour of the skin an olive brown, though the colour varies from an almost copper brown to a dull white. The women are lighter in colour than the men, and in the higher classes they are often perfectly white.

In their domestic relations the Japanese are kindly, especially to their children, for whom they have intense affection, and for whose pleasure they will make any sacrifice. The Japanese takes but one wife; but he has it in his power to take secondary spouses, and not unfrequently avails himself of the privilege. The Japanese women are in a state of extreme subjection to their lords.

Hoteï

The religion of the vast mass of the people is Buddhism, with a vast array of bonzes or priests, and great temples, colossal idols, and a complicated system of worship. One of the grandest of the idols is well described by M. Humbert; it is the image of Diaboudhs, the great Buddha:—"The road to the temple is distant from all habitations; it winds between tall hedges, then a straight road mounts up between foliage and flowers, then a sudden turn follows, and all at once, at the end of an avenue, is seen a gigantic divinity of copper, seated in a squatting attitude, with the hands joined and in the attitude of contemplative ecstasy." The acceptance of the Buddhist doctrine of the ultimate passing of man into annihilation produces, it is said, in the Japanese, that wonderful disregard of human life which is one of their most remarkable characteristics. But besides the Buddhist theology, there is also a worship of the Kamis, or ancestral divinities, which prevails in Japan. The Kamis are not always the ancestors of separate families: the greatest of them, indeed, are the fabled ancestors of the whole Japanese race. But the belief in these ancestral deities leads to a vast amount of reverence being paid to the memory of the dead, and to annual visits to the tombs of the departed. These visits to the hills of the dead which surround the towns are distinguished by much illumination of torches, and terminate with a setting afloat of little boats, each with lights, which drift down the river at night, and of which the lights are one by one extinguished. There is, besides, a belief in a number of tutelary deities, some of whom are half-mystic heroes—gods who preside over the events of life, whose fêtes are occasions of much national rejoicing, and whose influence contributes to counteract the sombre effects which an exclusively Buddhist belief would produce. Of one of these, Hoteï, the accompanying illustration gives a representation, the fac-simile of a Japanese drawing. Hoteï is the personification of contentment in the midst of poverty. He is the sage who possesses no worldly goods—the Diogenes of the great Nippon. His sole belongings are a scrap of coarse hempen cloth, a wallet, and a fan. When his wallet is empty, he only laughs at it, and lends it to the children in the street, who use it for their games. For his part, he converts it by turns into a mattrass, a pillow, a mosquito-net: he seats himself on it as on an inflated skin to cross a current of water. Hoteï leads a somewhat vagabond life. He is sometimes met mounted on the buffalo belonging to a cultivator

1. Le Japon illustrè, par Aimé Humbert, ancien plènipotentiaire de la Confédération suisse. 2 vols. 4to. L. Hachette et C^ie, Paris.